This invention relates generally to refrigerators of the household type, and more particularly to an arrangement for mounting the compressor in a household refrigerator which uses a minimum of separate fasteners and allows the compressor to be premounted on a support frame that is easily assembled on the refrigerator cabinet.
Household refrigerators of varying sizes take the form of a rectangular box for which an important design parameter is to obtain the maximum interior space within a box of minimum exterior dimensions. While a certain amount of space must be allocated to the thickness of the insulation in the walls and interior partitions, such as the partition between the freezer compartment and the food compartment, as well as the evaporator which is mounted within the frozen food compartment or closely adjacent thereto, the compressor and the condenser are the major space occupying elements of the refrigeration system that must be mounted on the exterior of the insulated compartment.
While the condenser may be either mounted as a flat member on the back of the cabinet or as a coiled member beneath the bottom wall of the insulation space, it is often the compressor, with its relatively large size and relatively boxy shape, that requires the most space. Thus, the most common location for the compressor on current household refrigerators is within a compressor compartment formed at the bottom rear side of the cabinet which allows minimum intrusion into the insulated space.
When the compressor compartment is located at the lower rear portion of the cabinet, it is recognized that with compressors now having a relatively long life and with the replacement costing the consumer sometimes a substantial portion of the original price, replacement of the compressor in the field is not considered to be a significant problem in refrigerator design. Thus, the walls of the compressor compartment are generally made with a minimum of clearance for the compressor, consistent with necessary air circulation for cooling purposes. The compressor is normally mounted on three or four rubber bushings for vibration isolation, and these bushings, in turn, are mounted on either a plate or pair of rails at the bottom of the compressor compartment. Normally, the plate or rails are formed as an integral part of the cabinet during assembly, and on the assembly line it is necessary to place the compressor directly over the mounts on the rails and use suitable fasteners for securing the compressor in place. While some types of mounts use threaded fasteners, such as bolts, through each of the rubber bushings, this requires considerable cost and assembly time during manufacture. A more common arrangement currently is to have a plurality of projecting pins or posts formed on the plate or rails which project upward to extend through the rubber isolation bushing. The compressor then has projecting tabs with apertures that fit over these posts or pins which are adapted to receive a simple locking pin or hook to hold the compressor securely in place. Thus, this type of mounting arrangement does incur substantial labor costs during assembly, and extra care must be taken to ensure that the compressor is properly mounted with rubber isolation mounts to prevent the conduction of the vibrations from the compressor to other parts of the refrigerator system, which would result in an unacceptable amount of noise.